Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Do Overs

Well, we’re not really, we have mommy, she’s just out looking for food.

I meant all three of us. Why are we alone?

Because everyone else is dead Junior.

Why did they die daddy?

It’s a long story Junior.

Do we have to be somewhere soon?

You
have me there son. Ok, this is why. It started with the ordinary
people. The farm workers and truck drivers and custodians and dock
hands. The rich people got tired of them, always whining about never
having enough, always committing physical crimes, always being unhappy
and vulgar. So the rich people started wars, and they sent all the
ordinary people off to other places to kill each other, until the wars
were over, and then they just stopped paying attention to the survivors
until one by one they died.

So how come there’s no rich people?

Well,
once the ordinary people were all dead the rich people discovered none
of them had learned how to do all those mundane tasks the ordinary
people did, so they went without cleaning crews and bakers and grocers
and infrastructure maintenance folk and the world was over time,
smothered in rot and disease and starvation.

Couldn’t the rich people make their own food?

Oh
some tried to eat the products of their own labors, but they found
there was virtually zero nutritional quality in ledger sheets, whether
by the individual page or by the entire vault full.

Was that the only food they could make?

Oh
some could cook alright, there were a few of their women who were just
bored enough to learn a toaster from an easy bake oven, but without the
farm laborers and the butchers and the millers and even the people that
operated the machinery to turn chicken beaks into pink slurry that could
be molded into McNuggets, not to mention the power plant operators who
would create the juice to run the microwaves that served as rich people
ovens, they couldn't heat anything anyway, and once you are accustomed
to a certain standard of living, so I hear, cold food just isn’t worth
eating unless it’s smothered in caviar… and without fisherpeople… you
see the problem son.

But…

That’s enough son, your mom can explain more if you like, I’m tired of speaking about the past.

Just one last question daddy, one that’s different from those others?

Sure kid, one more. Shoot.

Why are we still here daddy? Aren’t you either an ordinary person or a rich person.

I
am a warrior son. A mercenary. The rich people hired me to kill the
ordinary people who were stealing their money, and the ordinary people
hired me to kill the rich people who were stealing their lives. Once
they were all dead, I only had to kill the other mercenaries, and lucky
for your mommy and you, I’m very, very good at what I do.